The invention relates generally to an arrangement for processing radiation-sensitive articles.
More particularly, the invention relates to an arrangement for developing and fixing film.
The German patent no. 14 97 395 discloses an arrangement for processing rolls of film having a predetermined size. The arrangement includes a succession of processing tanks which receive racks for transporting the film through the processing baths. Individual drives are provided for the various racks and are all connected with a main drive.
Each rack includes a plurality of pairs of conveying rollers driven by a main gear which is adapted to engage the individual drive for the respective rack. The rack has a pair of lateral walls provided with aligned grooves which receive the edges of the film and guide the same along a U-shaped path.
The width of the rack corresponds to that of the film. In particular, the rack is capable of accommodating film having a width of 105 mm. which is the largest width readily available commercially for film in the form of rolls.
There has recently been a trend in the medical field to make movies on 35 or 16 mm. film. X-ray pictures are also made on films having other widths such as 100, 90 and 70 mm. In other areas such as, for example, the microfilm industry and amateur photography, filmstrips having widths of 8, 16 and 35 mm. are used.
In order to enable processing of a specific type of film, the size of the rack must be adjusted to the width of such film. However, when processing film having a width less than the maximum width which can be accommodated by the processing arrangement, a portion of the latter is not utilized. For small widths, such portion may represent a substantial fraction of the capacity of the processing arrangement, e.g. two-thirds of the arrangement remains unused during processing of 16 mm. film. The unused capacity of the processing arrangement represents waste and hence leads to increased costs.